The twanging and decay of the psaltery—whether you call it a kannel in Estonian, a kokle in Latvian, a kanklės in Lithuanian, or a kantele in Finnish—is a sublime sound. One of deep history, filling the atmospheres of our legends and oral histories. Sometimes it seems untouchable but for a chosen group of songsmiths, but the psaltery was made available, and in great numbers, at Tartu College in Toronto during the Baltic Psaltery Meetup, a cross-cultural event hosted by VEMU Estonian Museum Canada.
Organized by Katariina Jaenes of the Canadian Estonian Youth Association (KENA) and supported by the Estonian Central Council in Canada, the gathering served as a performance showcase and a pedagogical foundation for the kannel. Jaenes noted that while these instruments are often described as a “box of strings,” each Baltic culture maintains distinct traditions for them structurally, in the way they are used, and how they preserve heritage.
Some instruments have especially humble origins. One Lithuanian kanklės on display at a museum was recovered from a farm where it had been repurposed as a container for chicken feed.
The history of the psaltery is steeped in curious historical anecdotes. Scholars argue the instrument could be anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 years old. An unusual 16th-century court document from Tallinn describes a dispute between two butchers where one reportedly struck the other with a “non-German harp,” a term likely referring to an early kannel. Some instruments have especially humble origins. One Lithuanian kanklės on display at a museum was recovered from a farm where it had been repurposed as a container for chicken feed. Traditionally, these were solo instruments played by men, often tuned to the preferences of the individual maker. However, the 20th century saw a sociological shift toward female practitioners and ensemble playing, a transformation that Dace Veinberga, speaking and teaching at the meetup, suggested remains a fascinating subject for future dissertation studies.
Migration and the refugee experience of the mid-20th century were of course key in bringing these traditions to Canada. When families fled the Baltic states in 1944, very few physical instruments survived the journey. Only one Latvian kokle is documented to have arrived in Canada during that exodus. To preserve the tradition in exile, craftspeople relied on memory and ingenuity.
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One refugee in a German DP camp built a 13-string kokle based on a sketch he had made in his passport before being called into military service. In Canada, luthier Tiit Kao continued this craft in Fergus, Ontario, producing Estonian-style instruments that utilized modern autoharp pegs to improve tuning stability, which was a practical departure from traditional wooden pegs, a detail that’s sometimes met with scrutiny by ethnographic purists.
After cultural and technical details were shared with attendees about the instruments—including perspectives from Lithuania up to Finland from Jurgita Zvinklyte, Laura Legzdins, Dace Veinberga, Katariina Jaenes, and Matti Palonen—it was time to listen to what’s possible with the instruments. Laura Legzdins delivered a warm, free-spirited performance of songs in the style of a troubadour, with opportunities to sing along in Latvian and a demonstration of plucked notes versus strummed chords. There was even a modern interpretive technique reminiscent of slide guitar: Legzdins used a drinking glass to slide against the strings while striking the notes, producing a thunderous effect. Her performance would have fit in well around a Jaaniõhtu/Jāņi bonfire with whimsy, sorrow, and a hearty holler at the end.
Honeypaw, the duo consisting of Matti Palonen and Jurgita Zvinklyte, which has previously been featured in the pages of Eesti Elu, brought out the especially rustic, spiritual, and meditative side of the psaltery. (Pointing to that spiritual significance is how Lithuanians traditionally cut a tree for an instrument on the day of a person’s death to give them an enduring voice.) Between a large psaltery on a stand with a lower range, a smaller, higher-register kanklės, wooden pipes worn around their necks, and their voices together, they ventured into the polyphony of Lithuanian sutartinės, found on wax cylinder recordings from the early 1900s. One song from their set touched upon the custom of leaving one tree standing among felled trees for the cuckoos to sing.
…imagine playing an autoharp, but your own fingers are the buttons that touch the strings lightly to selectively mute them and make chords or pluck from both hands to sound out individual notes.
After these enchanting performances, everyone was quite keen to try the instruments for themselves, split up around the periphery of the room based on region, size, shape, and tuning (keys of C, D, and E). Teaching one group of participants with his own hand-crafted kanteleet in the key of D was Matti. He emphasized the importance of anchoring fingers to specific strings, which, as a guitarist who’s never fully adhered to the PIMA technique while fingerpicking, was challenging to adhere to. But this way, participants were able to play scales cleanly and form basic triad chords in a few minutes. To help conceptualize the psaltery, imagine playing an autoharp, but your own fingers are the buttons that touch the strings lightly to selectively mute them and make chords or pluck from both hands to sound out individual notes.
The workshop segment of the evening shed light on a disparity in contemporary folk music education in Canada. While the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Finnish diaspora communities have a long-standing tradition of teaching these instruments to children in respective heritage schools and other community spaces, the Estonian community currently lacks a similar structured programme.
Katariina Jaenes expressed hope that the high turnout for the event, which exceeded her initial expectations, would serve as a catalyst for new kannel groups. There definitely seems to be a visible demand for more psaltery ensembles and formal instruction, particularly for Estonians seeking to reconnect with this ancient musical building block of their cultural identity.
